10G Network between two CAD computers

dutchmichael · October 9, 2019

Hello,

I have a small business in which we have two Designers that use Autodesk Inventor. Because there are only two people using the system we do not want to setup vault ( basically a server type system where you sign out files ) but would rather just access all the files from one computer. I tried this a number of years ago with a gigabit connection but it was way to slow, on larger assemblies you would need to wait over a minuet just to save. I think the problem had more to do with latency then with the actual speed of the connection as the absolute largest assembly would not consist of more then a gigabyte worth of files ( average file size within the assembly is 70kb to 11Mb ). Currently we keep a copy of the files on each computer and rely on a program to sync the files between the two computers, but I find this to be pretty dangerous as the program can make mistakes as to which file to update.

My question is would a 10 gigabit system work for this arrangement? If so is there better cards to get then others? I saw one of linus's videos on 100 gigabit which might be an option but it gets pricy and I do not know if it will solve my problems ( and is way overkill as 10 gigabit is more the sufficient ). The other option is try and make two computers in one, but would rather work with a direct network link. Any thoughts would be much appreciated, and thanks in advanve!

Michael

Windows7ge · October 9, 2019

10Gbit by itself doesn't lower latency, it increases bandwidth. Working with many tiny files in the KB/low MB range will cause very painfully slow transfers when there are a ton of them. It can make a 1GB transfer take a few minutes enough though you'd think it'd take 10 seconds on 1Gbit. I think you'll run into the same issue you did back then.

mariushm · October 9, 2019

Make a 7zip archive with the folder, with NO compression (select store at compression level) then copy archive over. Or, at the archive creation panel, choose the destination folder the other computer's shared drive and the create archive without compression ... either way, it's the hundreds of connections and disconnections that are killing the speed. If you send a single big file you'll get a fast transfer.

dutchmichael · October 9, 2019

Thanks for the replies,

Windows7ge: Thats what I was afraid of, but I thought there might be some sort of network card that would be "specialized" with this kind of problem.

mariushm: Thanks for the suggestion, however I wont be able to zip any of the files as there are many and they are spread out through many different folders and places ( standard parts in one spot, parts borrowed from other machines ext. ) which makes it a bit difficult. Also one of the main reasons I do not want to go to a "vault" system, as we have many different smaller jobs that we need to switch between and signing files in and out is kind of a pain.

Anyone have any other suggestions for connecting two computers together and sharing many small files back and forth? Or is my best bet trying to make a computer with 2 virtual machines that access one hard drive that contains all the drawing files ( if thats even possible )

Thanks again.

WereCatf · October 10, 2019

57 minutes ago, dutchmichael said:

Anyone have any other suggestions for connecting two computers together and sharing many small files back and forth?

The single, biggest improvement in speeds when handling lots of small files will come from....an SSD.